CONCLUSIONHarden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work. Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways: Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest (Ps. 95:8-11).
The Book of Numbers is the Pentateuch's book of sanctions: the fourth book in the Pentateuch. Oath/sanctions is point four of the five-point biblical covenant model.(1) The Book of Numbers is an integral part of the five books of Moses. Its theme - sanctions - is integral to the five-point biblical covenant model.
The book begins with the mustering of the holy army of God. This was the second mustering. The first had taken place about seven months earlier (Ex. 38:26). The third and final mustering took place just before the conquest of Canaan (Num. 26). A numbering required the payment of atonement money for the blood to be shed in the subsequent battles of the army (Ex. 30:12, 15).(2)
The Slave's Mentality The Israelites had spent their lives as slaves. Through their leaders, they had resisted Moses and Aaron after the two had confronted Pharaoh (Ex. 5:20-21). In refusing to heed this request by Israel's elders, Moses and Aaron replaced them as national leaders by the time of the exodus. Each of God's ten negative sanctions against the Egyptians followed a confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh. These sanctions publicly ratified God's sovereignty over Pharaoh.(3) They also ratified the transfer of civil and ecclesiastical authority from the existing rulers of Israel to Moses and Aaron. The exodus, which culminated in Israel's crossing of the Red Sea (positive sanction) and the drowning of Pharaoh and his charioteers (negative sanction), was the final ratification of this transfer of authority. But as the Book of Numbers reveals, these foundational sanctions in the history of Israel did not completely persuade the ex-slaves. They repeatedly lost faith in Moses' leadership, which meant that they repeatedly lost faith in the God whom Moses represented, and who consistently brought visible sanctions in response to Moses' words. Moses' ability to forecast God's immediate sanctions identified him as a prophet, yet the people resisted Moses' words and God's ratification of them. In this sense, they were like their former master, Pharaoh. They would promise to obey, but then they refused.
Slaves depend on masters. The master first makes plans; he then works to carry them out. He gathers resources, which includes slaves. He owns both the raw materials and the slaves. The model for the office of master is God the Creator, who created raw materials and then created Adam. God owned all of these resources because He created them. He delegated responsibility to Adam to administer His resources in terms of a goal: Adam's judicially representative dominion over the earth (Gen. 1:26-28). To one degree or other, the master delegates responsibility to his slaves; if he did not, he would have to do the work himself. Of what economic use would such unemployed slaves be? They would be little more than adornments for the master: consumer goods.
Representation
A good slave must learn to think his master's thoughts representatively. He should think to himself, "How would my master want me to do this?" This is why Christ warned: "No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon" (Luke 16:13). A good slave will not do things the way his evil master would. He therefore becomes unfaithful to his master, even if his acts increase his master's wealth. He becomes a representative of another, higher master, the heavenly master who lays down the law in history and enforces it in history. This is why bad masters lose control over good slaves in history. The good master eventually delivers good slaves from their intermediary bad masters. He does this in history. The nineteenth century is proof.
The Israelites had lived in Egypt under two masters: God and the supposedly divine Pharaoh. As time went on, and as deliverance seemed to be delayed, they took on the moral characteristics of their earthly master, Pharaoh. We see this in the first confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh: Moses' slaying of the cruel taskmaster. The Israelites were envious of him. They preferred to see him torn down from his position of authority rather than have him rule over them. "And when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together: and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow? And he said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian? And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known" (Ex. 2:13-14). That phrase, "Who made thee a prince and a judge over us?" was to become the constant refrain of the Israelites in the wilderness. The answer was obvious: God had. In rejecting the leadership of Moses, they were rejecting the authority of God. This was God's testimony to Samuel half a millennium later: "And the LORD said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken me, and served other gods, so do they also unto thee" (I Sam. 8:7-8). They wanted a leader like the other nations had, which meant that they wanted gods like the other nations had. They preferred Pharaoh to Moses. They preferred the golden calf to God.
Time Preference
The Israelites were marked by impatience. In their years in Egypt, they had grown impatient with God. They looked to Pharaoh as the ultimate sanctions-bringer in history. Yet God operated on a very strict timetable. "And it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and thirty years, even the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt" (Ex. 12:41).(4) This impatience is a familiar theme in the Book of Numbers. The golden calf incident was typical of Israel's entire wilderness experience: with Moses absent, the people played with idols.
This short time frame is common to lower-class people, who are present-oriented.(5) They are slaves to the present. The Bible says that we must be slaves to the future.(6) God rules the future as absolutely as He rules the present and the past. An important mark of His people's faithfulness is their confidence in the future, for it is governed by God's eternal decree. This is seen through faith, since we cannot see the future. But God's reliability has been revealed in the Bible through the prophets' accurate predictions of future events.(7) The mark of the true prophet was two-fold: accurate predictions regarding the future (Deut. 18:22) and faithful theological testimony regarding the one true God (Deut. 13:1-5).
A person who is future-oriented is upper class, no matter what his present income is. His thinking is characterized by long-range planning, thrift, and a willingness to defer gratification. Mises calls this phenomenon low time-preference. The future-oriented person is willing to lend at comparatively low rates of interest. He is unwilling to borrow at high rates of interest in order to fund present consumption.(8)
The generation of the exodus could not plan for the future successfully. They were trapped by their own present-orientation. They could not see beyond the present. They were therefore blind to the reality of the past. They kept crying out to Moses to take them back to Egypt. They remembered the past in terms of the low-risk immobility of slavery. The past deliverances of God did not persuade them to accept His promise of future protection because they had no confidence in history. They did not believe that the events of the exodus testified to the reliability of God's covenant with them. They did not believe Moses when he prophesied the positive sanction of future victory. They demanded constant reassurance. "What have you done for us lately?" was their constant rhetorical question to Moses, and therefore to God.
In this sense, they were radical empiricists: spiritual forefathers of David Hume and modern existentialists. For the radical empiricist, there is no continuity of law in history. Patterns of cause and effect that individuals believe they have observed in the past do not prove the continuing existence of the same fixed patterns in their observations, let alone in the world beyond their observations, whether in the present or the future. The fact that a radical empiricist remembers that when he stuck his finger into boiling water, it hurt, does not prove to him that it will hurt the next time he does this. The mother's warning to her small child who is about to touch a hot stove - "Hot! Hot!" - may persuade the small child not to touch it after a few painful experiences, or even after one, but this does not persuade the radical empiricist to change his theory of causation and perception.(9) The small child possesses greater epistemological clarity and more common sense than the radical empiricist. Similarly, the children of the exodus generation had more sense than their parents. They, unlike their parents, learned from experience.
Sanctions and Inheritance The Israelites departed from Egypt bearing spoils. The sons of Israel survived the corporate negative sanction of the death of the firstborn. All of Egypt's firstborn sons perished on the night of the Passover. Their inheritance went to the departing Israelites. The positive sanction of inheritance was based on the negative sanction of disinheritance. There was a biblical principle at work here: "A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children: and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just" (Prov. 13:22). The Book of Proverbs extends this principle: "The curse of the LORD is in the house of the wicked: but he blesseth the habitation of the just" (3:33). "The memory of the just is blessed: but the name of the wicked shall rot" (10:7).
The status of the Levites as the tribe in charge of the sacrifices also reveals this relationship between sanctions and inheritance. The sacrificial system was a system of negative sanctions applied to judicial representatives (animals) by judicial representatives (priests). The priesthood represented the firstborn sons of Israel. They had achieved this lofty status because they had shed the blood of 3,000 Israelites after the golden calf incident.(10) But the status of the firstborn was ultimately not lofty, for the firstborn son was under a curse: a representative of Adam, God's firstborn. Only because God accepted an animal substitute did the firstborn sons of Israel survive Passover night. Had there not been a sacrifice, the firstborn sons of Israel would have perished as surely as the firstborn sons of Egypt did. Because the Passover lambs were disinherited, the firstborn sons of Israel inherited. Because the 3,000 sons of Israel were disinherited by the Levites, the Levites inherited the unique judicial status of the nation's priestly tribe. But this judicial status involved great risk: life lived within the sacred boundaries of the tabernacle-temple. Violations of sacred space and sacred ritual could bring death (Lev. 10:1-2). The inheritance of Eleazar and Ithamar was based on the disinheritance of Nadab and Abihu (v. 6).
Canaan was supposed to be disinherited by Israel. This disinheritance would be the basis of Israel's inheritance. This transfer of wealth was based on ethics, not power. God had told Abraham: "But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full" (Gen. 15:16). Corporate, national iniquity was the covenantal basis of the disinheritance of the Amorites. The progressive rebellion of the Amorites was cumulative. It moved toward eschatological fulfillment.
Sanctions and Eschatology Israel had been given an eschatology: guaranteed inheritance through military conquest. The exodus generation had not believed this eschatology. Or, more to the point, that generation refused to believe that the eschatological fulfillment of the promise of a land flowing with milk and honey was in any way associated with Israel's prophetic role as a sanctions-bringer in Canaan. Israel rejected the specified terms of the inheritance: military conquest. So, the next generation would inherit. This meant that each of Israel's holy warriors would have to accept both the obligation and threat of personal military sanctions in battle. Israel's national inheritance was tied to the presence of these sanctions.
This leads us to a theological conclusion. Point four of the biblical covenant model is sanctions. It is as tied judicially to point five, inheritance, as it is to point three: law. God imposes historical sanctions, positive and negative, in terms of His covenant law. These sanctions result in inheritance by His covenant people and the disinheritance of covenant-breakers. This is why theonomy is inescapably and indissolubly tied to eschatology. Theonomy is inherently postmillennial because theonomy is biblical law, and biblical law is indissolubly linked to God's covenant sanctions in history. Law without sanctions is mere opinion. Theonomy without predictable historical sanctions is mere opinion - one not widely shared. Theonomy without postmillennialism is God's law without predictable sanctions - sanctions that lead to the victory of God's kingdom, in time and on earth.
The New Covenant has not annulled the covenantal structure of inheritance. On the contrary, the New Covenant reaffirms it. "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth" (Matt. 5:5). The New Covenant was marked by a transfer of inheritance from Israel to the church. "Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof" (Matt. 21:43). This transfer was visibly imposed by God through Rome's destruction of the temple in A.D. 70.(11)
Like the generation of the exodus, the vast majority of today's Christians steadfastly maintain that the covenantal structure of inheritance no longer applies in history. Amillennialism and premillennialism march arm in arm on this point. Amillennialists insist that God will progressively impose corporate negative sanctions against the church. Christendom as a civilization will be suppressed, if it has not already been consigned by God to the ash can of history. Not only that, antinomian amillennialists insist, the very idea of Christendom is a perverse legacy of Old Covenant Israel. They dismiss the ideal of Christendom as "Constantinian."
Meanwhile, premillennialists are divided. Historic premillennialists, whose ranks are thin, agree with the amillennialists: until Christ returns to set up His earthly kingdom, things will get worse for God's people. The dispensationalists insist that things would get worse were it not for the rapture. The church will be delivered out of history. Both of these eschatologies agree: the covenantal structure of history has been reversed by God. Covenant-keepers will be progressively disinherited, which covenant-breakers will inherit the earth. Only the cessation of history - by either the final judgment or the rapture - can bring back the covenantal structure of history as it existed under the Old Covenant.
The New Covenant is, to this extent, a burden of cosmic proportions for God's people compared to the Old Covenant. The death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ in history brought a harsh legacy into history, we are assured by pessimillennialists: the reversal of the covenant's basis of inheritance. Their eschatologies are consistent with their view of sanctions, i.e., that covenant-breakers will progressively impose historical sanctions on covenant-keepers. Pessimillennialists have a consistent theology of historical sanctions and inheritance: covenant-breakers will inevitably inherit in history because God has predestinated them to impose historical sanctions on the church. This was the operational eschatology of all those who sought to stone Caleb and Joshua.
The suggestion that all three eschatological views can coexist indefinitely inside the same ecclesiastical organization is necessarily a suggestion that neither covenant theology nor eschatology matters decisively in the life of the church. Both doctrines are to this extent adiaphora: things indifferent to the Christian faith. Ultimately, this suggestion of eschatological pluralism is highly partisan. It favors the worldview and anti-Christendom agendas of both amillennialism and premillennialism, for these outlooks are united in their opposition to the covenantal structure of inheritance and disinheritance in the New Testament era. In the name of eschatological neutrality, amillennialists and premillennialists come to postmillennialists and ask them to agree that covenantal postmillennialism's view of the past and the future is, historically speaking, a moot point. Moot points are mute points. This is an ancient lure: the myth of neutrality. It is offered in the name of peace and growth. It is the myth that undergirds all forms of confessional pluralism.
This is why a consistent theonomist must reject eschatological pluralism as an ideal for the creeds and confessions of the churches. There is no eschatological neutrality in the Bible. Premillennialism, amillennialism, and postmillennialism cannot all be true. If they are said to be judicially equal, then eschatology is necessarily reduced to the status of adiaphora. A church that is not postmillennial is like the generation of the exodus: fearful of judicial and cultural victory, committed to wilderness wandering as a way of cultural life, and hostile to those who, like Caleb and Joshua, predict inevitable victory in history.
To discuss eschatology apart from a consideration of God's law and historical sanctions is to ignore the covenant's structure. The covenant is a unified system. It cannot be broken analytically and still retain its authority. Any consideration of inheritance, either in eternity or in history, has to include the doctrines of sanctions, law, authority, and the sovereignty of God. A discussion of eschatology apart from historical sanctions is as misleading as a discussion of prophecy apart from the sovereignty of God. To say that something must happen in the future while asserting that man is totally free to choose a different future is covenantally absurd. It is equally absurd covenantally to discuss eschatology without discussing sanctions: covenantal cause and effect. It is also covenantally absurd to discuss God's historical sanctions without discussing God's law. The covenant is a unit. It cannot be broken.
Postmillennialists can afford to be patient. They understand that the future will bring victory for Christ's church in history. Christendom will be established in history. So, they can afford to do the work of dominion inside the boundaries of eschatologically pluralist churches. They know that when victory becomes visible over time, the defenders of pessimillennialism will face a much smaller audience. Most people prefer success to failure, dominion to martyrdom. They understand and believe the economist's dictum: "It is better to be rich and healthy than it is to be poor and sick (other things being equal)." Pessimillennialism is popular when things are going badly for the church and kingdom. It offers deliverance out of history: rapture or second coming. But when things start going better, and keep going better, Christians will at long last understand that the establishment of the kingdom of God on earth and in history is what is mandated by the Great Commission.(12) Then will be the time to revise the eschatological portions of various ecclesiastical confessions of faith.
Conclusion The Book of Numbers is the Pentateuch's book of sanctions. It ends with the story of Zelophehad's daughters. The leaders of the tribe of Manasseh wanted to know about a specific application of the jubilee's laws of inheritance. Would a tribe's land pass to another tribe if an inheriting daughter married a man from the other tribe? The answer was no. This is a fitting conclusion to the book of sanctions. It leads to the fifth book of the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy: the book of inheritance.
Footnotes:
1. Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1992), ch. 4.
2. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), ch. 32.
3. Gary North, Moses and Pharaoh: Dominion Religion vs. Power Religion (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1985).
4. The actual time they spent inside Egypt's national borders was 215 years; the time they spent under Egypt's kingdom authority, which extended to Canaan, was 430 years. See North, Moses and Pharaoh, pp. 14-17.
5. Edward C. Banfield, The Unheavenly City: The Nature and Future of Our Urban Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), pp. 47-48, 53-54.
6. North, Moses and Pharaoh, pp. 259-60.
7. This is why higher critics of the Old Testament invariably conclude that prophetic passages that demonstrably came true, most notably those in Daniel forecasting three future empires, were written after the fact. The suggestion that some men can know the future in detail is an implicit affirmation of teleology: a future that is fixed, i.e., not open-ended in terms of the present. It affirms predestination. Only man is allowed by humanists to seek to predestine the future, and even he is not acknowledged as being capable of achieving this goal.
8. On time-preference and the rate of interest, see Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1949), ch. 19.
9. I think this has something to do with Jesus' warning about hell: "Hot! Hot!" Rebellious children do not listen. They prefer to remain radical empiricists rather than become Christians. "Show me!" they cry. Jesus rose from the dead to ratify the reliability of His warning. The radical empiricist then cries: "Show me again!" He refuses to accept God's testimony (Luke 16:30-31).
10. See Chapter 4.
11. David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1987).
12. Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., The Greatness of the Great Commission: The Christian Enterprise in a Fallen World (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990).
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